More than 100 testimonies Since 2002!

Last update: Nov. 2018

(in reverse chronological order)

#156

Radiation

AGATE and JADE datasets

Run a simulation of solar power generation based on radiation of the past

Nov. 2018

User: Christopher Wild, student at Denmark Technical University (DTU), Copenhagen, Denmark" I am currently working on a project work for the course "Intelligent Systems" where we free to build up an Intelligent Systems of our choice. Our group's intelligent system should simulate the hourly power generation and demand on selectable locations. I need the data to run a simulation of solar power generation based on radiation of the past. I am very satisfied with your time-to-response and the clearly website and also the viewer on the page. But to optimize the location for power generating I need the full data set."

#155

Radiation

HChourDNI

Model a CSP plant in South Africa and inform a water consumption patterns analysis

Oct. 2018

User: Frank Duvenhage, PhD candidate at Stellenbosch University, South Africa" I am part of a researcg group at the faculty of Engineering called STERG (Solar Thermal Energy Research Group), and we have a track record of around eight years in the field. We multiple scientific publications and represent the largest research group in this field from Africa. We typically have at least more than 5 presentations at Solar Paces each year on various research topics for Solar Thermal Energy. I am doing my reserach on sustainable management of CSP fleet deployment and water resources. I am modelling water consumption for CSP plants in South Africa and therefore need solar data. The data will be used to model a CSP plant in South Africa and inform a water consumption patterns analysis. The data available from SoDa is easily accesable and seems to have been thoroughly validated. Thank you for a great service!"

#154

Radiation

AGATE Dataset

Simulate and estimate what combination of photovoltaic panels, solar inverter and battery capacity

Sept. 2018

User: Oihan Goenaga, Industrial engineer currently working in e-mobility" I wish to implement an off-grid self-sufficient solar system at my parents' home. For this I have developed a Matlab code that simulates the radiation and power outcome of the system with different panel layout, inverter and battery capacity. The problem is that I lack of the data to make it accurate. If it works I would like to develop more projects like this. My daily work is not related to photovoltaic systems, I work developing high voltage electric vehicles. Nowadays I am working on an electric minibus for the city of Barcelona. The data will be used to simulate and estimate what combination of photovoltaic panels, solar inverter and battery capacity would fit best to each use case. I would be really grateful if this little project worked with your help and hopefully become something greater in the future."

#153

Radiation

AGATE Dataset

Model past water demand based on past solar irradiance

Sept. 2018

User: Adam Simpson, Data analyst, South East Water, England" I am Adam Simpson, a data analyst at south east water, whom are responsible for providing drinking water to 2.2 million customers in the south east of England. My daily duties include processing data, such as flows and pressures, into information such as leak locations, allowing the business to make informed data driven decisions. I am investigating the connection between customer water use and the weather, with this particular data I will be attempting to model past water demand based on past solar irradiance. So far I am very satisfied, however I haven't had much of a chance to explore the data available yet."

#152

Radiation

HChourIncl

Validation of transposition models for solar irradiation prediction

August 2018

User: Yasser Fathi Nassar, Professor, Sebha University, Libya" I am Prof. Dr. Yasser Fathi Nassar, the head of the mechanical and industrial engineering department, Engineering and Technology Faculty, Sebha University- Libya. I need the HelioClim-3 database for a scientific research related to the validation of transposition models for solar irradiation prediction in many places in Arabic World. I would recommended this URL to my colleagues and students. And I am satisfied by the the organized and complied data that provided by the URL."

#151

Radiation

JADE Dataset

Simulate the performance of cooking solution

August 2018

User: Oscar Blanco, Master Thesis, Renetech, Sweden" The aim of my thesis is to help in the design, analysis, and modeling of a solar powered cooking solution that we have developed. Therefore, the data will be used for its implementation in the model, which will simulate the performance of the technology. I have not been able yet to use the software, but from the information I have read I believe it will be satisfactory, with the right data that I need."

User: Ricardo Meireles, founder of REWAT, Portugal"With more than 10 years working in renewables today I am the founder of a new start-up on renewables focused on solar energy with a mission to simplify the introduction of green energy in small and medium companies. Solar energy is our main focus on renewables and irradiation data is the most important information of our business model. The correct evaluation of the potential of a solar plant is crucial to fit the plant capacity to the company needs of energy. Soda information is absolutely reliable and accepted as a good reference by external entities."

#147

Radiation

JADE dataset

Analysis of the impacts of surface solar radiation on leaf turnover for tropical tree species

July 2018

User: Emma Bush, PhD student, University of Stirling, Scotland"I am a final year PhD student based at the University of Stirling, UK. I research the impact of climate change on the phenology of central African forests using long-term field data from Lopé National Park, Gabon. The JADE dataset will contribute to an analysis of the impacts of surface solar radiation on leaf turnover for tropical tree species. The SoDa service has been very rapid and I am very satisfied with it."

#146

Radiation

HC15Incl

Evaluate the real thermal performance of the outer shell of buildings

July 2018

User: Karel De Sloover, researcher, Belgian Building Research Institute, Belgium"I am a researcher for the Energy division of the Belgian Building Research Institute, our goal is the development and implementation of new technologies to improve the building sector. Currently, I'm developing new in-situ testing methods to evaluate the real thermal performance of the outer shell of buildings. Data from the HelioClim-3 database was used to quantify the heat gains due to solar radiation on multiple test cases dating back to 2014. I would recommend the data provide by the SoDa team, as they offer a considerable set of variables that is neatly compiled and organized."

#145

Radiation

JADE dataset

Study the enhancement of solar disinfection

July 2018

User: Stefanos Giannakis, post-doctoral researcher, Ecolde Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland"Currently, I am working on the solar-mediated disinfection of waters in Africa, funded by a H2020 program and the Swiss National Foundation (SEFRI). Our project can be found at: http://www.waterspoutt.eu. My role is to study the enhancement of solar disinfection by means of the Fenton process and solar light alone is the baseline. We have performed a series of simulated solar irradiation experiments in the lab, in order to inactivate bacteria, with a Suntest Solar Simulator from Atlas. We have tested the different irradiance values in the lab, and we want to extrapolate the results to the expected field values of solar irradiance. Finally, I have to underline that I was satisfied by the client service, as even during the vacation period your response was prompt and the requirements to get the data reasonable."

#144

Radiation

HCday + Number of hours per day

Calibrate and validate a prediction model for rotundone

June 2018

User: Olivier Geffroy, assitant professor, Ecole d'Ingénieurs de Purpan, France "I am assistant professor in viticulture and enology at Ecole d'Ingénieurs de Purpan, an engineering school located in Toulouse (South West of France) that delivers a Master degree in agriculture and food sciences. My researches aim at studying factors impacting secondary metabolites (aromas, phenolic compounds) in grapes and wines. In 2013 and 2014, I conducted a field trial to determine the key environmental and viticultural variables affecting the concentration of rotundone (the black pepper aroma compound) in wines from 10 experimental sites with the Gaillac PDO. Data provided by HelioClim-3 database were used to calibrate and validate a prediction model for rotundone. I am very satisfied with the service provided by the SoDa team, their reactivity and will recommend them without hesitation."

#143

Radiation

HCmonthDNI

African manatee conservation

June 2018

User: Aristide Takoukam, Ph.D Student, AMMCO, Cameroon "I am a Ph.D. student studying the African manatee to improve his conservation status. In one of my chapter, I am interested in assessing the factors influencing the distribution of the submerged vegetation (potential manatee food) in Lake Ossa, Cameroon, Africa. The Direct Normal Irradiance data product from SoDa Helio-Clim3 database for my ROI is going to be useful at estimating maximum depth of plant colonization (MDC) in the lake and therefore predict the distribution of the submerged vegetation. I am very satisfied with SoDa data."

Research on solar resource assessment in South Sudan using satellite data and Heliosat 4 method

May 2018

User: Aban Arop Yor Ayik, University of Juba, South Sudan "I am an Assistant professor and Head of Mechanical Engineering Department, College of Engineering and Architecture, University of Juba, South Sudan. Currently I am doing PhD studies in Renewable Energy at the Africa Centre of Excellence in Energy for Sustainable Development (ACE-ESD), University of Rwanda. At the University of Juba, I lecture and do administrative work at the department of Mechanical Engineering. I lecture on Thermodynamics, Fluid Mechanics, Fluid Machinery and Gas Dynamics. As a PhD student at ACE-ESD, my research interests include renewables for power generation (solar, wind, small hydropower), micro-grids, hybrid power systems and energy economics. The data I am requesting will be used for research purposes. I am doing research on solar resource assessment in South Sudan using satellite data and Heliosat 4 method. Your data will help me estimate the solar irradiation over different cities in South Sudan. This will help identify potential sites for solar power generation plants in the country. Frankly and honestly, up to the moment I am happy and excited to use data from your website and I am hoping to achieve great results."

#140

Radiation

HC15full&Meteo

Identify PV malfunctions

April. 2018

User: José Silva, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal "I've supervised a MSc work on thermography measurements to identify PV malfunctions and using the SoDa dataset I intend to now assess how can thermography and weather data contribute to better estimate the performance of a PV system."

#139

Radiation

HC15full&Meteo

Spatial downscaling of weather variables

April. 2018

User: Rodrigo Silva, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal "I'm a PhD student and I got recently curious on spatial downscaling of weather variables. SoDa showed to be a very useful and convenient option, as they offer a considerable set of variables and they're all neatly compiled and organized."

#138

Radiation

HC15full&Meteo

Energiy mix in Mozambique

April. 2018

User: Veloso Dava, Pedagogical University of Moçambique, Maputo, Mozambique "My PhD is focused on making future projections for the energy mix in the Mozambique context and its implications on the grid infrastructure. In order to accurately estimate the potential for the different renewable energy sources, having a good meteorological dataset is very important. Then, SoDa showed to be a very interesting option."

#137

Radiation

HC15full&Meteo

Energy storage

April. 2018

User: João Silva, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal "I'm currently doing my PhD in energy storage and I've been a solar energy enthusiast for quite some time. I have been interested in evaluating PV potential in an insular context and SoDa's offer was as a very good opportunity for me to do so."

#136

Radiation

HC15full&Meteo

Floating PV

April. 2018

User: Sofia Costa, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal "My MSc thesis focus is on floating PV and I was looking for a weather dataset which would allow me to characterize the solar resource and wind/temperature/humidity conditions in a water dam in Portugal. Soda's dataset showed to be very complete and exactly what I needed!"

#135

Radiation

Agate data volum

To help people in order to analyze the solar potential of the region they live in

April. 2018

User: Ionut Balazs, software engineer "I am software engineer with 8+ years of experience working in web development. I currently occupy the position of senior software engineer and mainly work with the Microsoft .NET technology stack, JavaScript client-side libraries and Azure cloud services. The software I work on a daily basis deals with enterprise project and portfolio management. However, I have great passion for space and renewable energy and I try to get as involved as I can in my free time and possibly work in this domain in the future. I don't intend on using the data at the company where I'm currently employed. Like I said, my intention is to use the data inside a local competition to devise a "proof of concept" for an online platform that could help people analyze the solar potential of the region they live in (Urban Life Hackathon powered by ESA - the European Space Agency). I developed a similar project last year at the NASA Space Apps competition, which won first place at the local level and went into the finals. Here's a link of the 30s video submission we made to the NASA jury: ICARUS. This time I want to continue to develop this idea using real data, which you can provide. So far I'm satisfied with the services SoDa provided both comprehensive data and service documentation and excellent customer support. I hope we can continue our collaboration."

#134

Radiation

HChourIncl

CYRAENEAU project: Modeling the water/heat transfers in the water/energy cycle

March. 2018

User: Pierre Seraphin, Mines Paristech, Centre de géosciences - Equipe SHR, Fontainebleau, France "I am currently working as a Postdoctoral Fellow with the SHR team to study the water resource. Made available by SoDa, these data feed a soil-vegetation-atmosphere transfer (SVAT) model. Then this model will be coupled with a groundwater and surface water model and applied to the Avenelles watershed (Seine-et-Marne, France). This tool will allow to improve the water resource management in a context of climate change, and better understand the impacts of thermo-dependent industries. We are very satisfied with the SoDa platform and recommend its use."

#133

Radiation

Agate data volum

Research to look closer at the market for renewables in France

March. 2018

User: Edvard Von Sydow, SITE, Stockholm, Sweden "I'm a research assistant at the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) working with associate professor Chloé Le Coq on a project exploring the energy market in France. SITE is a research institute and think tank that has a primary focus on the transition economies of the Former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The data will be used in research to look closer at the market for renewables in France, and possibly elsewhere. So far my satisfaction with the SoDa Service has been very good!"

#132

Radiation

Agate data volum

Energy technology and energy management issues

March. 2018

User: Fabian Jetter, Research Centre of Energy Economics (FfE e.V), Germany "I'm working at the Research Centre of Energy Economics (FfE e.V). The FfE is an independent research institute that focuses on energy technology and energy management issues (https://www.ffe.de/en/). As a research assistant with a geographical background I'm partly responsible for our data management system (based on Postgresql) with all of its data, spatial analysis with GIS (especially PostGIS) and the regionalization of information which is relevant for our energy system. For example we regionalize the future installed capacity of renewable energy plants for the German 'net development plan' or perform power grid calculations. For calculating regional power profiles of photovoltaic plants for different weather years I would need time series of the irradiation in a highly spatial (a 0.2° grid step is perfect) as well as temporal resolution (a time step of one minute would be devine). At the moment we use the cosmo-eu modell with a temporal resolution of one hour. With the use of the AGATE-data we expect a significant improvement of our model. Up to now I'm highly satisfied with the SoDa Service ☺."

#131

Radiation

Agate data volum

Calibrate NWP outcomes for the purpose of solar power production forecasting

Feb. 2018

User: Karolina Szafranek, Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling, University of Warsaw, Poland"We have used satellite radiation dataset "AGATE" over Europe to calibrate our Numerical Weather Predition (NWP) outcomes for the purpose of solar power production forecasting. We are grateful to the SoDa team (represented by Ms. Mathilde Marchand) for the high quality of the shared data and their support for our research."

#130

Radiation

HC15Incl

Develop algoritm and web platform

Feb. 2018

User: Gabriele G, LCR Servizi, Italy"LRC is an small Italian company that work in web platform to provide system online that are used in many type of application. Our target is develop algoritm and web platform (back end and front end) for user B2B that work in Internet of Things, machine-to-machine, smart grid system etc. Our goal is combine many elements derived from measures, forecasts and calculations to generate analytical indexes able to give strategic information to our users. Some of these fundamental elements are meteorological parameters (measured data or estimated data), that combined with other type of data sources they allow us to construct ever more real scenarios. Radiation data it's very important data for this type of application, it's one of the most important elements used in applications about energy efficiency indexes sector. The service offered by SoDa Service it is optimal and with an good level of quality."

Energy transition in Africa with renewable microgrids for rural electrification

Feb. 2018

User: Nicolas Plain,PhD Student, Univ. Grenoble Alpes, Institute for Geosciences and Environmental research (IGE) Grenoble Applied Economics Lab (GAEL), F-38000 Grenoble, France"I'm a PhD Candidate in second year on energy transition in Africa with renewable microgrids for rural electrification. Our laboratory is working on a better estimation of the different renewable resources for high penetration scenarios in the electricity sector. We will use the solar data from Soda to better estimate the solar resource over the whole African continent for off-grid system. We enjoy working with the entire soda team we met during the one week solar resource training they give each year at Sophia Antipolis. They are very responsive and answer with great interest to all our questions. "

#125

Radiation

HC15DNI

Study of solar district heating

Jan. 2018

User: Michel Guenther, master student in Energy Systems at FH Aachen, Germany"My name is Michel Guenther, I'm working on my master thesis in Luxembourg. The goal of the master thesis is to investigate if solar (supported) district heating is economically interesting in Luxembourg. Furthermore I'm going to analyze some energy storage options for the mentioned purpose (daily or seasonal storage). In a first step the obtained solar radiation data will be used to compare the energy output of some solar collector types with the actual heat load of the network. In the second step the data is used as input data for a Matlab simulink simulation of the complete system. I am very pleased with the data and the endless possibilities regarding time step and time period. Also the fact that the CAMS Radiation Service can be used for free is an important benefit and should be highlighted. On top of that comes a really good and fast service and customer support."

User: William Anderson, PE, a PhD student at Naval Postgraduate School Monterey and Director, Utilities Engineering, NAVFAC EXWC, Port Hueneme, California, USA"I am researching optimization of remote island green microgrids considering complexity and using predictive modelling tools. I intend to use the data in MATLAB's neural network toolbox for predictive modelling of power generation from solar PV radiance. I am very satisfied with SoDA's service in that I have used it for Isle of Eigg and Canary Islands."

User: Martín Pablo Marietta, PhD candidate in Electronic Engineering at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain "My daily work is centered in the field of hybrid microgrids energy management. I´m studying the application of predictive control techniques in microgrids power electronics converters and the use of forecast and historical data is essential to determine the climatological scenarios in which these systems operate. The web services provides by SoDa: Helioclim-3 forecast (similarity and persistence) and CAMS radiation services are being of great value for my PhD Thesis. I am particularly grateful to the SODA team for providing a wide service that supports the academic research in the renewable energies field."

User: Noam Naveh, MSc student in Architectural Computation for the Bartlett, University College of London, UK. "The SoDa team have kindly helped me by contributing their high-quality sun radiation data. The information is used for my thesis which addresses urban peer-to-peer energy exchange. The staff at SoDa was extreme helpful, generous and kind. Many thanks!"

User: Luca Grigoletto, LRC company, Italy. "I work for a italian company named LRC. We use solar radiation data for studies in the PV energy reanalysis for single PV implants to estimate energy production. I am thankful for the download."

"I needed the locations of the centers of Meteosat-10 and Meteosat-8 (41.5°) pixels to work on satellite analysis clouds, and in particular for my applications in atmospheric dynamics. SoDa provided me with the first information, and I am thankful for this service. For more information on my research topics, please visit my page."

#112

Other

MSG locations

Land surface validation

Mar. 2017

User: Miss Langsdale, University of London, UK.

"I asked SoDa to send me the locations of the centers of the Meteosat Second Generation pixels in Spain to help me select a site for land surface temperature validation. I appreciated their reactivity."

#111

Radiation

HC1min

Evaluate the PV panels yield and techniques to increase it by cooling or spectral selection

"I am an energy researcher and doctorate student at Escola Politécnica da Univesidade de São Paulo. Our research is to modeling the primary solar energy available to evaluate the PV panels yield and techniques to increase it by cooling or spectral selection. The SoDa data will be used to validate the long therm modeling with a short term terrestrial measurement, as a high resolution time/space data it will be helpfull to achieve the project aims."

"Konar Energy is an EPC company which builds up Renevable Energy Plants. We have been doing O&M works for watching plants, analyzing PR values and preventing continuous running of plants. We will use your data to analyse our producing deeply. We are happy that SoDa Service will provide useful data to analyse and increase our PR values."

"We used the UV-A and UV-B radiation values derived from HelioClim-1 to characterize the climate of three wild sites in Lubéron where a plant grows and which is part of a regional project : the "inula montana". We wish we could also use more recent UV data, for instance via a similar service based on HelioClim-3. Transvalor provided us with three time series of UV data computed from HelioClim-3 version 5 sent by email to complete our analysis. It is quite complex to find a suitable information on the SoDa website. Documentation is spartiate. There is a redundancy with the soda-is.com website. However, we are very happy with the contact by email once estalished."

"I am a master student in ETH Zurich and currently an intern in ABB corporate research center, power system group. The aim of my reseach is to find the complementarity of renewable energy in a global scale. The irradiation data is good for its high resolution both in time and space. We can derive solor power based on these solar irradiance. We are satisfied for the data quality (despite some reliability of data is low), but we also wish that you can provide some easy-use API to download the data in batches."

#105

Radiation

HC3v5hourDNI

Study of the flux density distribution for the Linear Fresnel Reflector

"I'm a PhD student in renewable energy field. I needed data provided by SoDa to study the flux density distribution of a trapezoidal cavity absorber for the Linear Fresnel Reflector installed on the city of Meknes (Morocco). Those data greatly helped me to obtain results that I'm looking for using Tonatiuh software. After a long search of this data, I finally contact the SoDa team that provide detailed information, so I would like to thank SoDa team for their help and support for scientific research. Publication: doi=ajsr.2018.96.104"

#104

Radiation

HC3v5_15min

Variation in solar radiation through a data gathering period September 2015

"I work on the impact of viticultural and environmental variables on grape and wine aroma. Data provided by Soda were used to get an idea of the variation in solar radiation through a data gathering period. These data might also be useful in the future to model grape surface temperature dynamics. The Soda staff was very friendly and reactive. Thanks for your availability."

"Working on demand response optimization algorithm for residential buildings. Radiation data will be used to model load demand under different weather scenarios considering multiple sites and architectonic settings. HC3v5hourDNI data will useful in order to model building thermal load. I really appreciate all support to research being done by SoDa"

#101

Radiation

MACC-RAD

Comparison of solar radiation data and ground measurements

Mar. 2016

User: Yannick Tcheussi Moyo, student at the Cologne University for Applied Sciences, Germany.

"The SoDa data was very helpful for my student work. It aimed on the one hand to evaluate the correlation between insolation data between satellit and on-site measurements, on the other hand to compare the with the results of some atmosphere models. The results was very satifying and I am thankfull."

#100

Radiation

HC3v4_SimilarityForecast

Cooling and power generation research

Feb. 2016

User: Nasser Al-Azri, research at Sultan Qaboos University, Oman.

"The areas of my research group is on utilizing solar energy for cooling and power generation. We are currently developing Typical Meteorological Years (TMYs) for Oman and due to the scarcity in ground measurements we are considering using satellite data for solar radiation. I used the SoDa HelioClim-3 Forecast service for some days and compared them with actual measurements. I noticed good agreement especially towards the mid-day hours. The relative error tends to be higher at the beginning and end of the day. The forecast figures were reasonable for our activities."

"Solar Data provided by SoDa shall be used to analyze the feasibility of in-direct Solar desalination systems as of the current technological developments, hence posing the requirement of the most recent solar irradiation data. The data will be used for computing the net availability of solar energy to run a Multi-Stage Flash (MSF) desalination plant power by a solar Trough collectors and a RO (Reverse Osmosis) desalination plant powered by a PV farm. Finally, it would be analyzed which of the two Indirect Solar desalination configuration provides a sustainable efficient and feasible solution for a set region and production flow rate. All queries made were promptly responded and with the most encouraging attitudes even though no costs were involved. Whereas everything nowadays seems to hold a price tag. I appreciate SoDa for all the data they had provided and hope my acknowledgement benefits them."

"The data provided shall be used for determining the direct beam irradiation with regard to parabolic trough collector available at a specific location which would help in determining the energy from sun. The energy available from sun would further be used in analyzing the amount of electricity that could be generated. I would rate the services provided to be excellent (A++) for the following reasons: i) prompt timely support ii) very friendly attitude and response to queries, iii) very informative data with precise information, avoiding confusion by not overloading with heaps of unwanted data and iiii) last but not the least, student friendly to provide information without any costs which any company would rarely encourage."

#97

UV

UV derived from HC3v5

Protective compounds (flavonoids) in plants as a biological response to abiotic stressors such as UV radiation

Nov. 2015

User: José Carlos del Valle, student at Pablo de Olavide University, Spain "My name is José Carlos del Valle. I am a PhD student at Pablo de Olavide University, Seville, Spain. We are investigating the synthesis of protective compounds such as flavonoids in plants as a biological response to abiotic stressors such as UV radiation. Thanks to SoDa, we obtained the data on UV radiation in several populations throughout the coast of the Iberian Peninsula, which helped us to unravel the relationship between the synthesis of these compounds and UV radiation. SoDa Service was extremely helpful, and we are very grateful for their kindness and throughout our research. In addition, they also provided us with the HelioClim-3-derived UV data for two locations that are of interest for future research." Download the corresponding publication

#96

Radiation

MACC-RAD

Cost efficiency of municipal energy system

Oct. 2015

User: Simon Gallasch, student at RWTH Aachen University, DE

"The SoDa information helped me a lot. I used the free MACC-RAD portlet to retrieve solar radiation time series for by Bachelor thesis. My bachelor thesis subject if the analysis of a municipal energy system with regards to cost-efficiency, by using portfolio theory. For several energy generation technologies, I compute the levelized costs of Energy (LCOE) on an hourly basis in order to set up a power plant dispatch that takes into account not only the absolute cost, but also the cost and generation risk. For the PV technology, I used the hourly global radiation retrieved from the MACC-RAD database to compute the LCOE of PV. I thank SoDa for providing this information."

#95

Radiation

HC3v5month

Solar radiance evolution

Oct. 2015

User: Enrique Backhaus (Senior Consultant), Renewable team of Infrata "Prior to this I worked in EDF for 3 years in the Retailing and Thermal Generation departments. Infrata is a lender's and sponsor's technical advisory covering Renewable energy, Infrastructure, Rail and Aviation. In particular our role is to advise potential sellers their overall performance and technical and contractual position. The data would be used to understand the solar irradiance evolution and effect on roof-top and ground mounted solar systems. I consider that my queries were treaded by SoDa is a professional and timely manner."

#94

Radiation

HC3v5hour and MERRA

Optimized hybrid energy systems

Oct. 2015

User: Alireza Ebrahimi, graduate student in electrical engineering at Semnan University. "I need Weather data for my Master's thesis. The topic is the cost and operation optimization of a hybrid energy systems including wind turbines, solar cell, battery and diesel generator. In particular, I needed long term time series of wind and radiation information for the site of Semnan, Iran. I am thankful to SoDa and Transvalor for having sent me this information which supports my research work."

User: Parag Rastogi, doctoral assistant, Interdisciplinary Laboratory of Performance Integrated Design LIPID of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), CH "I study the interaction of indoor environment (i.e. in buildings) with the outdoor climate, especially the climate change. I will use SoDa data for case studies. It is very important to understand the building answers located in different areas and compare results between these areas. I am very glad to receive data supplied by the SoDa service which was fast and convenient."

#91

Radiation

HC3v5_10min

Solar irradiation forecast

August 2015

User: Yashwant Kashyap, PhD Indian Institute of Technology Mandi, IN "My research topic covers the solar irradiation forecasting. HelioClim-3 AOD and clear sky irradiation data obtained via the SoDa website help me to improve the performance of forecasting with different irradiation models. I am pleased with the SoDa facility that has replied all my queries and facilitated me to recover data"

User: Robert Kröni, Jendra Power, Managing Director, CH "Jendra Power works as certified expert for photovoltaic equipment (TUV) on various solar power plant located all over Europe. Very often, our task consists of checking the performance over a certain time. To fulfill this task we need monthly solar radiation data for various and changing locations in Europe. We will use global horizontal radiation to adjust the forecasted production of a power plant. We take the long term monthly radiation (at least 10 year average) of the chosen site and use the actual data to adjust the forecast. We have been checking several sources of global radiation. The best source is always ground measured data. But unfortunately it's not always available. SoDa is flexible and provides quickly data for any place within the range of the satellite. In summer data is very accurate, within the error range of ground data. In winter time the deviation is still larger, but "best available guess".

#88

Radiation

HC3v5hourIncl

Monitor a large number of sites in southern UK

August 2015

User: John O'Toole, Renesola, UK. "Our purpose is to monitor a large number of sites in the UK, perhaps 300 in total. The sites will generally be in the South of the UK, and we would like hourly data over a tilted plane, typically 20 Degrees, Azimuth 180 (South). The SoDa team sent us two samples of data, so that we can make our mind on their data. SoDa support were always very prompt and helpful dealing with our technical and commercial queries in relation to high frequency, high volume solar data provision."

#87

Radiation

HC3v5Month

Effect of solar radiation on tree fruiting patterns in Kibale National Park, Uganda

August 2015

User: Kevin Potts, Augsburg College, PhD, Minneapolis, USA "We are investigating the extent to which solar radiation influences tree fruiting phenology in Kibale National Park, Uganda, and how it interacts with other abiotic and biotic features to produce temporal fluctuations in food availability for chimpanzees in the forest."

#86

Radiation

HC3v5_15Incl

Yield analysis and performance review of photovoltaic power plants

July 2015

User: Markus Vogel, g2kv GmbH, Consulting and Engineering office for Photovoltaics, Germany "As technical advisors we frequently require long term weather and irradiation data in order to produce yield analysis for photovoltaic power plants. Satellite data give a reliable source, especially when local weather station are not available or far away. In addition we frequently conduct performance review of PV power plant. In order to bench mark the irradiation measured on site we find the services provided very useful."

#85

Radiation

HC3v5_15

Wireless telemetry devices and automated meter reading

July 2015

User: Graham Adams, technical lead for the company which is ASL Holdings Ltd ASL, based in Northampton, England. ASL is a "We are a leading provider of wireless telemetry devices and automated meter reading (AMR) services in the UK primarily in green energy (Solar PV, Wind Farms, Electric Vehicle) and the commercial electricity supply industry. We also provide solutions for remote asset tracking and monitoring in many other industry segments. We are using the HelioClim data to provide more accurate performance monitoring services for our Solar PV clients, and to improve the ability to predict the financial return of Solar PV systems. We are very pleased with the data quality and service we receive from the SoDa service."

#84

Radiation

HC3v5_15 and HC3v5_day

Simulation for Cement company based in Zambia

July 2015

User: A. M. Jonatana, Ecole des Mines de Nantes, France.

"We are a project team within a Cement company, based in Zambia. We are currently working on a solar project aiming to fully power a Long Conveyor Belt. We have already used HelioClim-3 radiation values to pre-size our solar installation and convinced of the reliability and wealth of this database, we have again collected historical irradiation data over the last years for simulation purpose. We are grateful to SoDa team and look forward to continue our collaboration with them."

#83

Radiation

HC3v4_forecast

Feedbacks of the test period of this service: March to April 2015

June 2015

User: R. Escada Chohfi, GeoDesign, Brazil. "This service will be suitable to services that GeoDesign will provide in the near future. At the moment, I do not have any recommendation to enhance the quality of the service. I just tested the service on a single location (lat/lon) because I ran out of time widen the analysis. My next application will be to test the service on a larger area. I thank SoDa to have let me test it for a while, and I look forward to receive updates on the last innovations."

#82

Radiation

HC3v4_current day

Feedbacks of the test period of this service: March to April 2015

June 2015

User: Mr. André Schumann, SolPEG GmbH. "Yes, we have downloaded data for 6 sites on daily basis until end of March. We did this as a routine and did not find the time yet to analyze the data. The quality of the data would be interesting for us regarding possible future services. At the moment we do not have a "product" for which we could use the data directly. I will let SoDa know our opinion as soon as we found time to have a look at the data."

#81

Radiation

HC3v4_currentday

Feedbacks of the test period of this service: March to April 2015

June 2015

User: O.Guillet, EMOTIC, Nantes, France. "Indeed, we only launched a very limited number of requests. We didn't test the full capability of this service providing HelioClim-3 radiation values in real time and forecasts until the end of the current day. However, we already know that the service fully fits our current needs, and we plan to use it in a near future, sometime in the last trimester 2015. We are still in the design phase of the projects with our own customers, but the content meets to our expectations. Ideally, we would also like that this Web service could also be available in REST and transmitting the data in JSON format for an enhanced automatisation with our own software."

#80

Radiation

HC3v5_15

Comparison survey between the PV-yield obtained from HelioClim-3 version 5 and Transmission System Operator PV Feed-In data

June 2015

User: S. Raths, Institute of High Voltage Technology, Aachen, Germany. "We ordered a large volume of 15 minutes Global Horizontal Irradiation values over Europe with a spatial resolution of 20 km. We performed a backtest to generate historical PV-Time Series for Europe that we validated against the PV Feed-In data published by the national Transmission System Operators. The correlation was around 97% for northern Europe as well as in the south."

#79

Radiation

HC3v5_15Incl

Production Forecast typical day (daily changes) and battery sizing

June 2015

User: A. Barret, HELEXIA, Roubaix, France. Started in 2010, HELEXIA develops, finance and designs roof integrated pv plants. "Every month, we use HC3 monthly data to compare our PV-plant production. We are currently looking how to add self-powered lighting under car parks. To do that, we need to understand typical days - specially with big daily changes - to design batteries. HC3v5_15Incl allows us to pick the days we are interested in, and check the battery design on those specific days according to different self-powered times. I thank the SoDa team for these precious data."

#78

Radiation

HC3v4_forecast

Forecast data to build optimized scenarios for the use of heating or air equipement

May 2015

User: C. Berthuet, EFFICIENCIA, Toulouse, France. "The influence of sunlight radiation on the energy needs of a building (for heating or cooling) can be very important depending on the type of construction and the use made of it. With forecast data provided by SoDa, we can anticipate these specific needs for the day ahead to build optimized scenarios for the use of heating and air conditioning equipment. For example, we exploit the inherent inertia of the building for 'storing' heat at favorable moments, or we offer optimized scenarios of shutters use to control solar gain preserving natural light. These scenarios are then used by integrators who will instrument a facility to automate the operation (eg as part of an energy consumption cut-off)."

#77

Radiation

HC3v5hourDNI

Spatial and temporal prediction models for the evaluation of renewable energy supply potential in Switzerland

"I have been using the irradiance data developped by SODA in the framework of researches dedicated to rainforest sensivity to climate in Central Africa. The high spatio-temporal resolution of the HelioClim product enables documenting irradiance evolution over a range of time-scales from the diurnal cycle to the interannual variability. For what I have seen it agrees well with rainfall and nebulosity satellite products over the region. The team has always responded positively to my requests (provision of data, help with the product documentation...) a point I definitely appreciate."

#75

Radiation

HC3v5hourDNI

National Energy Strategy in Morocco and renewable electricity mix scenario

March 2015

User: Mr. Alaa Alhamwi, Ph.D. student, NEXT ENERGY- EWE Research Centre for Energy Technology. "The Moroccan National Energy Strategy is one of the most ambitious renewable energy strategies in the Middle East and North Africa. It aims to install 42% of total installed capacity by 2020 from renewable resources, with equal proportions of installed capacity for solar, wind and hydropower resources. This strategy is investigated in a paper (see reference below) which quantifies the optimal configurations of renewable energy resources and assesses the strategic Moroccan power generation mix from a meteorological perspective. For this purpose, the hourly solar irradiation data in 2010 were provided by the Solar Radiation Data Service (SoDa) for 5 different locations in Morocco."Ref: Alhamwi A., D. Kleinhans, S. Weitemeyer, T. Vogt, 2015. "Moroccan National Energy Strategy reviewed from a meteorological perspective", Energy Strategy Reviews, Elsevier, Vol. 6, Jan. 2015, pages 39–47.

User: Paolo Caraccio, METEOCA "We have used a SODA global horizontal irradiance hourly time series to check carefully the solar potential of a location in South Africa comparing the result with some measurements to have a sort of validation benchmark. The comparison shown that the SODA time series were accurate, update and highly available as data consistency."70

#72

Radiation

HC3v5monthIncl

Backoffice and solar asset management services to investors

Feb. 2015

User: Chrysovalantis Micrommatis and Leandro Sancho, Solar Asset Managers at Quintas Energy, London "At Quintas Energy we provide specialised backoffice and solar asset management services to investors in the clean energy sector. HelioClim is one of several data sources we use for yield analysis of the solar PV sites we manage. The support from the SoDa team is excellent and we look forward to continue our collaboration with them."

#71

Radiation

HC3v515DNI 70

Prediction of Power Production for Moroccan Solar farms

Jan. 2015

User: Mr. Youssef El Aomariyine, PhD student at the International University of Rabat, Morocco "I am a IT PhD student and the topic of my PhD work is 'Prediction of Power Production for Moroccan Solar farms'. The data provided by HelioClim-3v5 greatly help me compare and validate different prediction algorithms. I found the radiation data to be very useful because they provide detailed information, are precise and because they are always available and updated every day. I would like to thank the SODA Team for the quality of data, their help and their support for scientific research."

#70

Radiation

HC3v5monthDNI

PV yield assessment

Jan. 2015

User: Mr. André Schumann, SolPEG GmbH. "HelioClim is one of several data sources we usually evaluate for our independent yield assessments of PV projects. We appreciate the kind support and continuous development of the database by the SoDa Team".

#69

Radiation

HC3v5monthIncl

PV yield assessment

Jan. 2015

User: Mr. Pierrick Morier, VOLTA ENVIRONNEMENT (Utility). "I use HelioClim databases to get irradiation statistics which I fail to find in any other third party databases. These data are provided in a timely manner and meet perfectly our expectations both in terms of reliability and smoothness of the processes. We recommend the SODA solution for all PV professionals.".

Application for the performance monitoring of the solar installation of our client.

Dec. 2014

User: Ivan Theunissen and Dan Nita, Visionnear, Romania. "The scope of the application has the purpose to give to potential clients a platform where they can follow up the performance of their solar installation. Our client is Ampires (in cc of this mail) for who we develop the application. Your proposal to open the service till Feb 1st should give us more than time to test the application with real data. Thank you for your collaboration and for sure we keep you informed with the progress made".

#66

Radiation

HC3v5day

Daily GHI values for agriculture in Argentina

Dec. 2014

User: Dr. Gabriela Lakkis, Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias. "Argentina is a country where the agriculture is one of the most important sources of production and solar radiation is a key factor in that issue. We are dealing with many estimation models and solar radiation data must be as exact as possible. The SoDa website provided us HelioClim-3 data for the cities we need to analyze and the support of the webside was very quick and helpfull. We want to thank SoDa for this support".

#65

Radiation

HC-3v4hour

Simulation of economic optimization model for virtual power plant

Nov. 2014

User: Sri Rahayu, Hoschule Aschaffenburg. "In Aschaffenburg, Germany, we are working to make a simulation of economic optimization model for virtual power plant which consist of PV system and other power plant from renewables. In a short word, we sould be able to do a maximization of profit of the power plant operators in the future by providing them the profitable options in how to participate into energy market based on either forecasted power production or forecasted electricity price. For PV system, in this case, we strongly need the forecasted data of solar irradiation in order to get perspective of the solar PV production in the near future. We happily found HelioClim that would help us to get the data. Many thanks !".

#64

Radiation

HC-3v4-15

P50 –P90 PV-storage plant yield estimation

Nov. 2014

User: ARTELIA Eau & Environnement. "In order to increase penetration of PV generated electricity in small to medium size grids, large battery systems are used linked to PV power plants and driven by complex Energy Management Systems (EMS). SODA provided us with reliable and extensive 15min data that allowed us to compute accurately the EMS working for power plant projects, design the systems and provide a relevant P50-P90 yield of the plants. We were really pleased by the quality and efficiency of SODA services and look forward to work with SODA in our future projects".

#63

Radiation

HC3v4-15

Comparison of solar radiation data

Nov. 2014

User: María Gómez Bardón, student at 'Universidad Europea', Spain. "As a renewable energy student, one of my modules is photovoltaic energ, so my first work is to compare solar radiations data of different cities around the world in a minimum period of one year and analyzing the deviation of the data. I searched on the internet on all the websites that I could find, but any of them gave me all the info that I needed. I was loocking for global, direct and diffuse radiation monthly. Finally SoDa-website provided me all what I needed, the data was clear and easy to process. Also I contacted with the support and it was very quick and helpfull. I'm very satisfied to obtain the monthly Helioclim-3 data for the cities that I wanted, which allow me to make a comparative study for solar radiation in these cities".

#62

Radiation

HC3v4-15

Simulation of GHI through Markov Chains

Nov. 2014

User: Giovanni Carbone, engineering student at Sapienza, University of Roma. "In order to create synthetic GHI data series for a specific site, I used a helioclim-3 10 years series. I particularly needed clear-sky and real radiationvalues with a resolution of 15 minutes. Through the historical series, it was possible to create a simulator that, using Markov chains, is capable of generating a large number of data series with indefinite extension and statistical characteristic similar to the original. The synthetic data was later used to simulate the power output of a photovoltaic plant and evaluate (technically and economically) the effects of different storage system technologies. I want to thank SoDa for the support. The series was indispensable to my work for the master thesis".

#61

Radiation

HC3v4day

Study of the factors influencing nucleation of raindrops

Oct. 2014

User: José Manuel Fernández Guisuraga, student at the University of Leon, in Spain. "In conjunction to other inputs such as cloud coverage, relative humidity, particulate matter, wind speed and pressure, I needed daily radiation values in order to study the factors influencing nucleation of raindrops in a urban and a rural area. I chose two sites in Portugal since all the parameters except solar radiation are available. I thank Transvalor and SoDa which sent me these two time series needed to complete this study as part of my end-of-degree project. I am very satisfied with the service provided by SoDa; the requested data has a great overall quality and it fitted perfectly with my study".

User: Pavel Mezei, Institute of Forest Ecology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. "Spruce bark beetle can cause widespread damages during its outbreaks in spruce forests. Norway spruce is the most common tree species in Central Europe, especially in Slovakia, Czech republic, Austria and Germany. The yearly development of spruce bark beetle depends on temperature and solar radiation. There is an existing model on the phenology (number of generations per year) of Spruce bark beetle, called PHENIPS, and one of the basic input, among with maximum air temperature and mean air temperature, is the daily solar radiation in Wh/m2. We were very satisfied to receive the daily HelioClim-3v4 irradiation values for 5 sites in the Tatra Mts, which contributes to our modelling aiming at showing a potential statistical relationship between spruce bark beetle population dynamics and spruce tree mortality."Download here a summary of Pavel's work with the corresponding bibliography.News Nov. 2014: A manuscript for a scientific journal is being prepared on this thematic.

#59

Radiation

HC3v4hourIncl

Assessment of PV power source reliability, off-grid, wireless systems

Mar. 2014

User: Gustaw Mazurek, assistant professor at the Warsaw University of Technology. Helioclim-3 database offers on-demand solar radiation data in horizontal, inclined, and normal plane and in fine spatial and temporal resolution. Access to the data is granted via simple but powerful web interface. Results of our research show that Helioclim-3 database delivers estimations of solar irradiation on a tilted plane (GTI) with noticeably better accuracy than other databases available in the web. Moreover, thanks to fine temporal resolution and timeliness of this database, it is possible to evaluate the performance and reliability of any solar system with higher precision and confidence level.

User: Fabian Fogelberg, Master's Thesis Intern at Viktoria Swedish ICT, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden. "In my master's thesis, I looked at the energy balance and possible station design of a solar powered bike sharing system with electric bikes. As the solar panels would be placed in an urban setting where buildings will shade the panels, it is not clear how the panels should be oriented for maximum energy yield. With the detailed datasets from SoDa however, it was possible for me to both calculate the optimum orientation as well as model the pool system in high temporal resolution."

#57

Radiation

HC3v4monthIncl

France, Spain, solar resource assessment

Mar. 2014

User: Juan Rubio, consultant, G-advisory, Madrid, Spain. In the frame of a solar resource assessment in the region of Constantin, near Bordeaux (France), HelioClim3 has provided us with updated solar radiation data, which has been used in our study, allowing us to estimate the annual equivalent sun hours and therefore, the return on a potential solar power investment over the area. Date: March 2014

#56

Radiation

HCday

Harmful algal bloom, toxicity, Microcystis aeruginosa

Mar. 2014

User: Algirdas Svanys, Marine Science and Technology Centre, Klaipeda University, Lithuania "In order to investigate how do environmental factors effect developments and toxicity of harmful cyanobacterial blooms I performed a field study in Villerest reservoir (France) in 2009. I hypothesized that solar radiation may have an effect on the toxicity of cyanobacterial blooms. SoDa has kindly provided me the solar radiation data and I highly appreciate their contribution."

#55

Radiation

HC3v4month

Performance ratio, Italy

Mar. 2014

User: Andrea Vezzani, SOLAMA, Italy "I'm working for a company that makes asset management for photovoltaic and I need some data to verify the performance ratio of the system. The database of soda was recommended to me by a friend who plans photovoltaic systems. Transvalor sent us a free dataset for our study. We were glad to have this collaboration with SoDa."

#54

Radiation

HC15Incl

comparison between HelioClim and ground station measurements

Dec. 2013

User: GES company GES is a world leader in construction and services in both wind and solar technologies. The relationship with SoDa is established through the operation and maintenance department, specifically when taking the radiation estimations that SoDa performs from Meteosat data for a particular world location with specific conditions, so that may we know the precision of them once compared with the actual recorded readings from the meteorological stations of such plants, with remarkable results. The main goal of this collaboration is to be able to trust the estimations done by SoDa as reliable measures in case of exceptional situations that may occur in facilities located all over the world, such as damages to certain elements of their very own weather stations.

#53

Radiation

hc3v4hourIncl

solar potential of Denmark

Nov. 2013

User: Patrick Narbel, PhD Research Scholar, Norwegian School of Economics, Bergen, Norway. After forecasting the electricity production profile of two hypothetical wind farms in Denmark, I tried to do the same with a hypothetical solar power plant. Using this information, I want to show that solar power can be valuable in Denmark, even though solar radiation levels are not that "exciting" in that country (the value of solar power comes from the fact that there is already a lot of wind and adding more wind turbines just adds power when there is no need for it, whereas solar can contribute during times with little wind). I want to use this result to show that existing policy instruments need to be adjusted in order to reflect this "value". SODA provided me with the data on solar radiations, which made the whole comparison between electricity production from wind and sun comparable.

Germany, industry-funded research project, technical and economical interconnection of the regional electricity and heat market

Aug. 2013

User: K.H., Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System Technology "For the region of Northern Hesse two reputable research institutes and the municipal utilities analyse the transformation of the energy supply system towards a decentral and renewable power supply. For this the feed from solar cells and solar heat is simulated on an hourly basis. The solar radiation data of Transvalor are valuable inputs for the simulations. Transvalor is a reliable and helpful partner an we are glad to work together for some time now."

User: F. K., South French PV Company "Our collaboration with SODA was really successful. They could provide us DNI data very quickly and with all the support for our CPV project. So now we can do our own yield simulations on PVsyst which is fundamental for such a project. SODA team was really reactive and nice. We were completely satisfied by their service, their professionalism and their support."

#48

Radiation

HC3v4hour

Performance ratio

Jun. 2013

User: R. F., UK company "A leading German developer and EPC of ground based solar PV required almost real-time site specific irradiation and temperature data for a 6 week period in order to bench-mark one of its UK project's Performance Ratio (PR). We turned to Transvalor who offered a sample of satellite data to suited our immediate need. We received this on the turn and in user friendly format. We found the response and ease of working with Transvalor re-freshing and hope to be able to develop a long term relationship for the supply of this and other types of data for our whole group and sites across Europe. Thanks especially to Dr Claire Thomas for her assistance."

#47

Radiation

HC3v4month

long-term fluctuations in the water level of a mountain lake

Date: Jun. 2013

User: Isabella Bertani, University of Parma, Italy A post-doc researcher at the University of Parma (Italy) is working on the effects of extreme weather events on a mountain lake. To analyse variability in the amount of light reaching lake bottom in relation to long-term fluctuations in water level, a 25-year time-series of irradiance data was requested for a specific geographic location. After receiving the requested data, researchers working on the project gave their positive opinion on the service: "We are very grateful for the high-quality service provided by the staff at MINES ParisTech / ARMINES / TRANSVALOR. We received the requested data immediately after we asked for it, and the staff was also very helpful in answering some questions regarding data quality. Our experience with MINES ParisTech / ARMINES / TRANSVALOR was definitely positive, and the provided data will be of great value for our research project".

#46

Radiation Temperature

HC3v4hourIncl MERRA

Commercial service, Greece, pv sector

Jun. 2013

User: Vangelis Liaskas, OTENET, Greece A privately owned company from Greece, intends to offer a commercial service to its clients in the photovoltaic sector. For this purpose the company requested a quotation for near real time irradiance and ambient temperature data. To this extent and in order to evaluate the data and their format a free sample was requested for a specific set of coordinates in Greece. After the provision of the sample data the company expressed its satisfaction: " We are very impressed of the professionalism and the support received by the whole team of Transvalor. No matter of the success of our project or the suitability of the data, our communication was the opportunity to set up a meeting during the Intersolar 2013 event".

#45

Radiation

HC3v4hourIncl

Impact of new energy systems

May 2013

User: Rebecca Aron, Consultant, Artelys, Paris, France. "We are building a complete energy model (from production to consumption) of a local area in order to assess the impact of new energy systems implementation. Such systems should have an impact on the flexibility and shape of demand chronicles, and it is therefore essential to have an accurate representation of the local renewable intermittent production at a fine time step. SoDa's irradiation data helped us rebuilt the local photovoltaic production. "

#44

Radiation

HC15Incl

Optimisation of a hybrid PV-Battery system for a site in Namibia

Mar. 2013

User: Mrs. Ghada Merei, PhD student at the institute for power electronics and electrical drives (ISEA) in RWTH Aachen University – Germany "For a research project we optimize a hybrid PV-Battery system for a site in Namibia. To do the optimization the solar data is needed (direct, diffuse and global radiation). Since the irradiation data from ground weather stations is not available, it was the only way to get it from SoDa. The staff was very supportive and sent us the irradiation data for this location in a time step of 10 min over 10 years immediately. We found the HelioClim data very helpful for our research. It is a great solution for the researchers working in this field. Many thanks!"

Service . User: Ralf Clausen, Kiel's University of Applied Sciences (FH Kiel), Germany, Bachelor Student "I searched for solar radiation data for working at my bachelor thesis about validating income forecasts for photovoltaic plants. It was very difficult for a non-meteorologist user to know what data do I really need and how can I get it. So I was very happy to find the SoDa-website. Here I found a very good service and help for my questions. I was very satisfied with the service, because I got the data very quickly and it was good structured. Nothing missed and so I was able to work with the data without any problems. Thank you very much!"

#41

Radiation

HCHour

Design of a PV plant in Romania

Nov. 2012

User: Nicoleta Boghean, Romania. She wrote: "I was searching the internet trying to find relevant information on solar radiation and I was pleasantly surprised to found a website where I found reliable and complete information: SoDa website. This website has an extensive database ready for the client at every moment. The information provided by SoDa are essential in designing our first solar park (0,85MW) that will be placed in Romania, Zabrani village, Arad county. The SoDa staff was very helpfull, they responded in a very short time and they were very nice. The SoDa website will definitely be our database in the future for other projects. "

#40

Radiation

HChourIncl

Dynamic thermal modeling of buildings and durability modeling of facades

Nov. 2012

User: Ludovic Fülöp, D.Sc.(Tech.) Senior Scientist, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Espoo, Finland He writes: "We use the data in dynamic thermal modeling of buildings and durability modeling of facades. It is quite challenging to find hourly solar data. While other meteorological elements are collected, solar data is often missing. It may take many email exchanges with Meteorological Institutes to just discover that data does not exist for a particular time window in one particular station. SoDa offers wide areal coverage and data presented in a very accessible format. A potential user can quickly understand what data there is, and how it will look like when downloaded. This is very important advantage for non-meteorologist users, who come from the side of the applications".

#39

Radiation

HChourIncl averaged over each week

Sizing of solar system in South Africa (not possible to export energy in this country)

Oct. 2012

User: Mr Johan Buys, solar project developer, Paarl, South Africa "We had previously used the free database to generate estimates, but the data was for one year only and in some days incomplete. In October 2012, we made contact with Transvalor to enquire how we can get bulk data for multiple periods. We were able to get the data very quickly. To normalize the data we excluded the invalid days, produced data by week number and hour instead of day and hour, and then used statistical method to exclude the outliers. The importance of this exercise is striking when one compares the normalized data to the total as well as any one year Single years varied by nearly 10% in total annual output. This variance is obviously even more extreme at the week and hour level. The resulting output (from simple spreadsheet exercise) now gives us a more reliable / bankable model of the probable solar irradiation for every week of a year and by time of day. This is important for planning our electrical loads and matching to our solar system, as systems in our country are not allowed to export - getting the sizing right is therefore crucial to the financial outcome".

#38

Radiation

HCday

Calibrate of remotely-sensed vegetation water-use models based on satellite imagery

Oct. 2012

User: Mr. Dave Barz, Senior Spatial Scientist at HydroBio Advanced Remote Sensing, Santa Fe New Mexico. www.hydrobioars.com He used global radiation values to help calibrate remotely-sensed vegetation water-use models based on satellite imagery. He contacted TRANSVALOR S.A. in October 2012 to obtain seasonal data from a number of different locations across Europe that matched the experimental plots he was monitoring. He writes: "When I was searching the web for reliable solar data, I was pleased to find the SoDa website that offered solar data across such a vast region. I found the data readily available and exactly what I needed. I was able to quickly acquire data from multiple locations that would have taken much longer if I had to collect it from separate nation weather bureaus. The SoDa staff was responsive and helpful with my order. The SoDa solar products will allow us to more easily expand our calibaration efforts in the future."

#37

Radiation

HChour

Sizing the solar modules, South Africa

Oct. 2012

User: Mr. Gorkem Soyumer, Master Student at EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland. The hourly HelioClim GHI, humidity and temperature values are the inputs of his simulation to calculate the optimal size of solar modules to be installed at a non-profit residential application. The project was counducted at EPFL (www.epfl.ch). In October 2012, Mr. Soyumer contacted TRANSVALOR S.A. to have access to hourly irridation values for a remote location in Southern Africa where the geographical coordinates are known with high accuracy. He has indicated his satisfaction with the GHI values provided by the SoDa website: "The accuracy and format of HelioClim data renders PV simulations to be done in a much reliable way".

#36

Radiation

HChour

Confort of users, simulator for sport devices and surfaces

Aug. 2012

User: Mr. Pascal Haxaire, technical manager at LABOSPORT, le Mans, France. He used the hourly HelioClim GHI values in a simulator in order to optimize the confort of users. The inputs of this simulator are hourly GHI, humidity and temperature. In late August 2012, he contacted TRANSVALOR S.A. in order to know if it was possible to have similar irradiation values for other sites worldwide, outside the coverage of Meteosat. He wrote: "I am satisfied with the GHI values provided by the SoDa website. The accuracy of these data is well adapted to our activities. The HelioClim data generated a value-added information that allow us to offer new services on what I already handled".

#35

Radiation

HChourDNI

CSP, South Mediterranean region, electricity market model

Aug. 2012

User: Mr. Bernhard Brand, PhD student, employee at Wupperstal Institute, In Germany. Mr. Brand published a first article based on the free HelioClim irradiation values.Reference: Brand. B., A.B. Stambouli, D. Zelji, 2012. "The value of dispatchability of CSP plants in the electricity systems of Morocco and Algeria", Energy Policy, Vol. 47, pp.:321-331. He used the HelioClim values processed by the System Advisor Model software to obtain the hourly collector field output values for the site of Ouarzazate, Morocco. In August 2012, he purchased 12 time series of HChourDNI values for the year 2010, one for each main country around the Mediterranean coast. He wrote: " I will use these data in an electricity market model for a research purpose".

#34

Radiation

HCday

PV installation monitoring, PVsol software

July 2012

User: Mr. Matthew Rose, an Master of Science student, studying at The Centre for Alternative Technology, Machynlleth, Wale. His course: MSc Renewable Energy in the Built Environment His report concerns the assessment of the actual generation of a 3.23kWp PV installation from Sep 2010 to March 2012 against the (projected) modelled output using PV*Sol software and HelioClim irradiation data specific to location and timeframe. 3D modelling of near and horizon shading used. He wrote: "Without the HelioClim data it would be very hard to conduct this analysis, as irradiation data from ground weather stations is not of sufficient proximity to enable a meaningful analysis of the installation's performance. "

#33

Radiation

HC15

Energy consumption management in micro-grids with back-up PV/battery power source

Mar. 2012

User: Mr. Masoud Salehi, Masters degree, Iran. He wrote: "My name is Masoud Salehi and I am studding in a Master of Science degree at the Imam Khomeini International University. The 15 minutes HelioClim GHI dataset helped me in solar radiation analysis and modeling contribute to my dissertation. My dissertation subject is Energy consumption management in micro grids with back-up PV/Battery hybrid power source to optimize consumer costs too. Here is a link to a power point presentation, in Persian language. An English version will be available soon"

#32

Radiation Temperature

Climatic normals, Meteotest (not available anymore)

PV system performance

Feb. 2012

User: Amy Bilton, a graduate student at MIT She used data from "Global radiation on inclined surfaces and temperatures from normal years" to analyze a PV system for a paper that she was currently writing. She was grateful for this free service.

#31

RadiationLinke turbidity factor

Solar Energy Physics

Feb. 2012

"My name is Nald Erusiafe and I am a post-graduate student of University of Lagos, Lagos Nigeria. I am pursuing a Ph.D degree in Physics specializing in the field of Solar Energy Physics. My research work involves trying to estimate the amount of ground - reaching solar radiation and atmospheric turbidity from satellite images. I will like to use the HelioClim data as a reference and also for the determination of Linke turbidity factor since HC is based on the successful Heliosat method."

#30

Radiation

HC-3v315Incl

Integration of renewable energies in North Frisia into the electrical grid

Jun. 2011

User: Mr. Nico Buerker, Masters thesis, Industrial Engineer for Energy and Environmental Management, Germany. "For this I'm simulating the feed-in of renewables within this region. The objective of my thesis is the evaluation of the transmission requirements in dependence of the exploitation of renewable energies, as well as the analysis of alternative opportunities for the integration of renewable energies into the grid in the case of insufficient grid extension. The HelioClim database contributes to my simulation of photovoltaic feed-in power with a temporal resolution of 15 minutes."

#29

Radiation

HC-3v3hourDNI

Treatment of Water by the Solar Distillation method, Ile Ife, Nigeria

May 2011

User: Mr. Omololu Ogunseye, final year Civil Engineering student in Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, Osun State, Nigeria. "It is basically harnessing or harvesting the energy from the sun (Renewable Energy source) for Water Treatment. The data requested will give me an idea of the amount of energy possible in the location specified in my earlier emails to you. And since, I am still at the proposal stage; having an idea of the possible amount of solar energy that can be got at this location will help me justify in my proposal the need for this research at the location."

#28

Radiation

HCmonth

Comparison of a ground station measurement campaign with HelioClim-3 for a site in Mauritania

User: Mr. T. Moumtzakis, doing a Masters degree at the School of Applied Technology in the Department of Oil and Gas, Greece.His research topic is to gather information and measurements concerning the amount of gas and oil into the ground, as well as radiation information at ground level, in order to explore how alternative sources of energy can be used in Southern Europe against gas and oil for heating and cooling buildings. In this framework, he relied on the yearly GHI (Global Horizontal) and DNI (Direct Normal) maps of irradiation over the Greek territory.

User: Gonzalo Abal, Instituto de Física, Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad de la República Montevideo, Uruguay. "Our research project consists in condensing all available radiation data (from different sources and time periods) to produce a first detailed solar irradiation map for our territory. The Heliosat method is one of them. We also aim at producing a "typical solar radiation year" which can be used for simulation of thermal and photovoltaic solar installations, but also for agronomical considerations about annual yield of crops. The approx. 7900 Meteosat Second Generation pixels / HelioClim-3 time series which cover Uruguay will be combined with the in-situ measurements in order to provide for free to the community the map and typical years. We contemplate to purchase an annual subscription to access the HelioClim-3 data."

User: Petra Rüther, has a MSc in Civil Engineering from the Technical University of Karlsruhe, Germany, and currently writing her PhD thesis at the Norvegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway. "I am studying the ageing of different wood materials when exposed outdoors, especially how their appearance changes with time and how those processes can be receated in the laboratory. Material samples are exposed on vertical walls facing south, east, north and west. The prevailing weather conditions, especially wind driven rain and solar radiation, vary significantly depending on the exposure direction. Hence, it is crucl to not only know solar radiation doses on horizontal surfaces, but also on inclined surfaces, in my case vertical walls. SoDa services provide easy and especially user-friendly access to those data. I also compared data measured on horizontal surfaces at the site and found a bery good correlation to data provided by SoDa. Also, I especially appreciated the up-to-dateness of the data."

#22

Radiation

HC1+NASA-SSE

Solar Energy in Africa, the GEO

Nov. 2007

The SoDa Service has been associated to the activities of the Group for Earth Observation (GEO) thanks to the efforts made by the International Energy Agency (SHC Task 36). The GEO, initiated by the G8, gathers approx. 70 nations (including the European Commission). The GEO identified nine "benefital social areas". One of them is energy. NASA and MINES ParisTech / Armines promoted a success story in this domain, which is one of the 30 success stories to be shown to the ministerial council for all nine domains. Videos were prepared for the GEO plenary session and ministerial summit held in Cape Town in November 2007. The success story shows four real cases achievements in Africa exploiting solar energy. The design of these systems was made possible by exploiting the SoDa Service, that permits itself to combine the databases SSE and HelioClim from NASA and Armines / MINES ParisTech.

#21

UV

UV and spectral distribution

Buildings, materials

Apr. 2007

User: Thorsten Frost Mr. Frost and his collaborators study the weathering of coatings on glass substrates. UV radiation plays an important role. These engineers exploit the SoDa Service to gain knowledge in the geographical distribution of the UV radiation and exposure difference in different European countries.

#20

Radiation

HC

Water, impact of the climate changes on a drinking water reservoir

Apr. 2007

User: Dr. Lothar Paul Dr. Lothar is a researcher with the Neunzehnhain Ecology Station, a laboratory of the Technical University of Dresden in Germany. He is studying the climate change impacts on a drinking water reservoir system. He wrote "HelioClim data delivered by the SoDa Service were found to be close to our own measurements. It was very good. The reliability of the SoDa Service is excellent and it is very easy to use. However, the availability of the HelioClim database and of other databases changed during time and made our access difficult at times. We appreciated very much HelioClim when it was free. It would have been a good help to achieve our task. It is excellent, reliable, and provides long series of consistent values. However, it is too expensive; we cannot afford to suscribe to HelioClim data, nor to get conventional meteorological data".

#19

Radiation

Free radiation services in general

Irradiation on industrial sites

Mar. 2007

User: Stéphanie De Roux, from the company Butagaz She used the SoDa Service as a one-shot usage, to obtain the maximum irradiance over its industrial sites. Stéphanie De Roux wrote that only satellite data can provide the informations on irradiance necessary to perform the computations and that the performance of the service was excellent.

#18

Radiation

HC

Building, Thermal Regulation 2000/2005

Nov. 2006

User: Bruno Peuportier, MINES ParisTech Technical rules apply to building engineering; some of them relate to climate, including solar radiation and its three components: global, direct and diffuse. In France, it was shown that previous solar radiation data were obsolete (thermal regulation RT2000) and a new set is necessary (RT2005). The SoDa Service was used in this purpose in combination with data purchased to Meteo-France. It was found that using the SoDa Service provides a double benefit to create these new standards. It complements the data of Meteo-France when and where those are absent and provides in one click the three components while Meteo-France data are global radiation only and are to be entered into a specific software to obtain the other components. A revised standard data set was integrated into the standard RT2005. Contact: bruno.peuportier(-at-)ensmp.fr.

#17

Radiation

Solar irradiation maps from HC1 (Balkans)

Decision-support tools for the introduction of renewable energy systems in remote areas

July 2006

User: Rudjer Boskovic Institute (RBI) is the largest Croatian research centre in sciences and science applications. He used maps of solar radiation in the Balkans created from the service Soda-HelioClim-1 provided by MINES ParisTech in the framework of the RISE project supported by the European Commission. These maps are much more accurate than the previous ones that resulted from interpolation of point measurements. The Rudjer Boskovic Institute helps local municipalities of Croatia in taking decision to invest in renewable energy systems for producing electricity in isolated sites.

#16

Radiation

HC

Horticulture, daylighting, horticultural lamps - Greehouses

May 2006

User: Sander Pot, an Application Specialist Horticulture at Philips Lighting Professional Lamps, Natural sunlight is the cheapest source available but for horticulture it is not always available in sufficient quantities. Especially in regions between 40 and 80 degrees latitude the amount of daylight required for good plant growth is limited during the winter. Therefore, during this period, the use of artificial light has become very common in greenhouses to increase production and quality. Philips is a company specialized in technology with a very strong lighting division. Philips is the world wide leader in offering horticultural lamps for the use of supplemental light in greenhouses. Sander Pot wrote: "The use of supplemental light is depending on many variables and the availability of natural daylight (global radiation) is one of them. When global radiation is lacking for good plant growth or for maintaining quality as it is often the case during winter, we can calculate how much artificial growthlight should be supplemented based on the need of the specific crop. Accurate knowledge about the amount of natural radiation is in this case essential. In horticultural areas this knowledge is often available since growers are using solarimeters on the top of their greenhouses. However in many areas, where horticulture is less developed or for potentional new horticultural areas, this information is not available or at least hard to get. For obtaining this information the use of the SoDa Service has shown to be very useful".

SPYCE uses SoDa to monitor your PV system PV system performance SPYCE is an internet service that detects and identifies failures in PV systems by daily analysing their performance. Because the energy output of PV systems strongly depends on the irradiation, SPYCE needs hourly irradiance data for the locations of the PV systems. Sandra Stettler, scientist in the SPYCE team explains: "To determine the performance of a PV system, current and precise irradiance data is absolutely necessary. With the SoDa data we have reliable, ongoing irradiation data for every location in Europe. It allows SPYCE to check daily the performance of all PV systems and to give alert to the operators if necessary." The SPYCE service is a Joint Venture of the Swiss companies Enecolo AG (photovoltaic experts) and Meteotest (meteorological expertise).

#14

Atmosphere

Frequency of type of sky (old SoDa website)

Daylight performance of classrooms in Greece

Apr. 2006

User: Katerina Meresi, PhD in architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece. She has a MSc on Environmental Design of Buildings from Cardiff University, UK and is currently a PhD student at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece. Her research area is the Daylight Performance of Classrooms in Greece. She wrote "In the past I used Satel-Light for daylight information and skies frequency for Athens and Thessaloniki. Now I will try to take advantage of the services SoDa offers. For example, the sky frequency information is very useful because it gives you an idea of what sky types you should take more into consideration when, e.g., simulating a room in a certain software".

#13

Radiation

HC-1day

Climate and topoclimate of Oradea City

Apr. 2006

User: Aurelia Dumiter, a Ph.D student at University of Oradea, Romania, Department of Geography, Tourism and Territorial Planning The title of her thesis is "The Climate and Topoclimate of Oradea City". She wrote "Unfortunately at this moment I was helplessly to finish my study about city climate because there is none actinometrical station nearby Oradea, in order to provide me data about solar radiation. In these conditions, finding on Internet the daily values of solar radiation of the database HelioClim-1 for the period 2000 - 2005 was a tremendous help. I thank you very much for that".

#12

Radiation Temperature Relative humidity

EMPClimate

Buildings, certificates for materials

Jan. 2006

User: Mrs. Dalle, the Group Deceuninck The Group Deceuninck, approx. 3000 employees worldwide, specializes itself in compounding, the design, development, extrusion and finishing of PVC systems and profiles for the construction industry and in recycling. Mrs Dalle is the responsible for guarantees and certificates, wrote that among her duties, she has to determine the amount of global solar radiation energy per year in a specific place in the world in kiloLangley per year, to help in fixing the strategy where the different raw materials, lacquers and foils are to be sold depending on the limitations specified by the supplier (solar radiation, climates, temperatures, rain, relative humidity) and finally to set up a warranty certificate depending on the specific region, use of the product, climate and solar radiation. Due to an excellent collaboration with the team in charge of the SoDa Service, she can now perform most of these tasks in a single click. In addition to solar radiation, the SoDa Service provides temperatures, and, relative humidity. Furthermore, the SoDa Service produced a worldwide map of the radiation that provides at a glance an accurate knowledge of the climate zones. Exploiting the SoDa Service represents a true gain in efficiency and in accuracy.

#11

Radiation

HC

Rural electrification using solar energy in Africa

Jan. 2006

User: the company Lahmeyer, Germany The German company Lahmeyer International provides the whole range of technologies and services with regard to energy infrastructure development and infrastructure improvement. Mathieu Sarran writes "Our consulting activities in rural electrification by means of solar energy request accurate data on solar radiation. In Africa, such data are inexistent in under-developed regions. Accordingly, Lahmeyer International install itself measuring stations. This induces costs and presence of local teams for data collection and maintenance. The availability of radiation data assessed from satellite images by the école des mines de Paris that can be accesssed through the SoDa Service is a real advantage for our company. The first benefit is that they are available at any site: there are more data than Lahmeyer International can install stations. The second benefit is that archives are available instantaneously while our measuring stations should work two full years before delivering a consistent and reliable time-series. Advantages are evident: fast access to information, reliability of information, large geographical coverage, dramatic decrease of costs for study and planning. By exploiting these data, Lahmeyer International can realise projects quicker, in a manner more reliable, more complete and more competitively. These advantages benefit also to the customers of Lahmeyer International since the studies cost less and are realised quicker".

#10

Radiation

HChour

Solar energy for heating purpose

Nov. 2005

Sebastian Kranz is 18 years old and is attending the final year of the grammar school at Ansbach, in Bavaria, Germany. To pass the "Abitur", he realised an experiment with a solar panel. The hourly irradiation data he got from the SoDa Service helped him for this experiment and he was able to draw conclusions for his dissertation. He wrote "the SoDa Service was a great help". Take a look to a summary on his work.

Users: Researchers in the field of dermatology, for a campaign of comparison between UVA and UVB collected with a dosimeter and the UVA and UVB estimated from the HelioClim1 dataset - UV exposure Individual sun exposure can be assessed using meteorological satellite measurements. A study was performed to compare measurements of UVA and UVB exposure of children recorded with personal dosimeters with assessment through a detailed questionnaire and satellite measurements. Methods: 25 families with one index child participated in the study. Participants filled a questionnaire detailing daily activities, geographical location and circumstances of sun exposure. Corresponding satellite measurements of local UVA and UVB irradiation were obtained from the SoDa Service, and namely the database HelioClim. Results: Out of 353 days of sun exposure, 437 episodes were recorded with a dosimeter. Median duration of each session was 2 hours, 62 % of exposures occurring between 11 AM and 3 PM. There was a good correlation between measurements from dosimeter and satellite (r=0.48 for UVA; r=0.40 for UVB, Spearman correlation p<0.0001). Dosimeter records tend to underestimate the total exposure measured from the dosimeter (difference per session: 40 Wh/m2 UVA, 1.5 Wh/m2 UVB). The correlation was better for exposure in the sun (r=0.5 and 0.43 for UVA and UVB respectively), on the beach (r=0.57 and 0.42), at the seashore (r=0.64 and 0.40). Multivariate analysis adjusting for weather, exposure duration, horizontal or vertical use of dosimeter, shade, environment and activity showed that satellite measurements were only significantly influenced by the weather. Dosimeter records were essentially influenced by the type of use (81 % in UVA and 73 % in UVB decrease of measure when dosimeter was worn on the belt), exposures in the shade (54 % decrease for both UVA and UVB), environment (60 % decrease for UVA and 34 % for UVB for exposure in the country side). When adjusting for all variables, there was a significant independent correlation between dosimeter and satellite measurements (p < 0.0001 for UVA and UVB). Conclusion: Satellite measurements give a good estimate of individual UVA and UVB exposure, independently of exposure conditions and could be used to estimate actual exposure.Poster P-113 presented at The 6th World Congress on Melanoma, Sept 6-10 2005, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Authors: M. Boniol (IARC, Lyon, France), MS. Cattaruzza* (Dept of Public Health, "La Sapienza" University, Rome, Italy), L. Wald (Ecole des Mines de Paris, Sophia Antipolis, France), MA. Richard (Dermatologie, Hopital Ste Marguerite, Marseille, France), MT. Leccia (Dermatologie, CHU Grenoble, France), F. Truchetet (Dermatologie, Thionville, France), C. Renoirte (Institut Jules Bordet, Brussels, Belgium), P. Vereecken (Dermatologie, Hopital Erasme, Brussels, Belgium), P. Autier (Institut Jules Bordet, Brussels, Belgium), JF. Doré (INSERM U590 Lyon, France).

#8

Radiation

HC1month

Sales of electricity produced by solar power

May 2005

User: Yvonne Dauwalder from BKW FMB Energy Ltd, a Swiss company supplying energy to one million people in around 400 communities in Switzerland. In 2004 BKW supplied over 6'900 Gigawatt-hours of energy to private customers and distribution partners. BKW produces energy from hydro, nuclear, solar and wind power plants and is the principal partner in Switzerland's largest alternative energy production plants (Mont Soleil solar energy plant, Juvent wind power plant and the Stade de Suisse solar power plant). Yvonne Dauwalder used monthly sums of irradiation provided by SoDa as part of a monthly report about key factors influencing electricity sales to small and medium-sized businesses. Quoting Yvonne "thank you very much for the extensive SoDa Services, it is very convenient to use with detailed explanations and most amazingly, it is for free. It truly is one of a kind on the web!".

Within the framework of "PV in the developing world", mapping solar energy Irradiance data were obtained by the European Commission's Joint Research Center (JRC) – Institute for Sustainable Development from the SoDa service. JRC selected the SoDa service because it offers long time-series of irradiance values (from 1985 onwards) over a very large geographical coverage and it enables automatic access on Internet (approx. 200 000 requests for a year, that is 4 million requests made by JRC for 20 years). JRC was thus capable of creating unique maps and derived products to assess the value and benefits of solar energy systems to produce electricity in Africa, thus helping in combating poverty and developing human welfare. These maps are provided to African countries and European authorities to help decision-makers. The potential power output from PV systems is compared to the average daily electricity consumption per capita in the countries in question. The potentials of PV appear clearly; the potential production is much larger than the present consumption.Reference: Thomas Huld, Marcel Šúri, Ewan Dunlop, Lucien Wald, Integrating the HelioClim-1 database into the PV-GIS to estimate solar electricity potential in Africa. In Proceedings of the 20th European PV Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition, Barcelona 6-10 June 2005. More on PV-GIS.

#6

UV

UV and spectral distribution

Health, cancer

Jan. 2005

Matthieu Boniol, from IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer), an institute of the World Health Organisation (WHO), and his co-workers, from the French research institute INSERM UMR 453, are comparing UV radiation data delivered by the SoDa Service to outputs from digital dosimeters that have been brought all day long by volunteers during their summer vacations. The study evidences the relationship between skin cancer, sun bathing habits, social parameters and typology of individuals.

#5

UV

UV and spectral distribution

Health, pregnancy and vitamin D insufficiency

Jan. 2005

UK researchers from the University of Southampton, Royal London Hospital and Princess Anne Hospital Study Group, have studied the insufficiency of vitamin D in women of childbearing age. There is increasing evidence that the risk of osteoporotic fracture in later life may be determined, in part, by environmental influences during intrauterine and early postnatal growth. By studying a cohort of children, from birth to age of nine and their mothers during pregnancy, and by using UV data delivered by the SoDa Service, these researchers have found that maternal vitamin D insuffiency is common during pregnancy and is associated with reduced skeletal growth of the offspring during childhood; this relationship is mediated in part through umbilical venous calcium concentration. Vitamin D supplementation of pregnant women, especially during winter months, may lead to long-lasting reductions in the risk of osteoporotic fracture among their offspring. More on this story at the MRC Environmental Epidemiology Unit web site.Reference: Javaid MK, Crozier SR, Harvey NC, Dennison EM, Boucher BJ, Arden NK, Godfrey KM, Cooper C, and the Princess Anne Hospital Study Group, 2005, Maternal vitamin D status during pregnancy and childhood bone mass at age nine years: A longitudinal observational study. To be submitted.

User: Mr. Peter Stradiot from the company Innogreen Mr. Peter Stradiot is an agronomist, consultant for several international projects. His company Innogreen has a long experience in greenhouse growing, world wide. It exploits the SoDa Service on a regular basis for tomato growing. Irrigation of plants is controlled by the quantity of radiation received during a week. The use of the SoDa Service permits to avoid the installation of pyranometers on top of the greenhouses or to prepare projects for greenhouse installation.

#3

Astronomy

Solar-Geometry

Lectures

Jan. 2003

At the University of Paris-1 (France), lectures of geography in first year exploit the SoDa Service to illustrate the course of the sun in the sky and the climatology of the solar radiation in Europe.

#2

Radiation

HC

Horticulture

Nov. 2002

User: Gertus De Sauvage, engineer in his own company Sauvage Innovatie in The Netherlands He is a consultant in horticulture. He wrote that the SoDa Service provides valuable information on radiation that should have application in greenhouses.

#1

Radiation

several services

Synthesis of landscape in thermal infrared images

Jan. 2002

User: Thierry Poglio, of company Alcatel Space Industries He used several services of the SoDa Service to set up his software performing synthesis of landscape in thermal infrared. He was able to check the part relating to the downwelling radiation, short- and longwave.Poglio T., Savaria E., Wald L., 2002. Specifications and conceptual architecture of a thermal infrared simulator of landscapes. In Proceedings of the Colloquium SPIE (EUROPTO) "Sensors, Systems, and Next Generation Satellites VII" (CD-ROM), Toulouse, France, 17-21 September 2001, pp. 488-497.